Patients will be fined for failing to cancel their appointments. The government has adopted regulations on e-registration.
- On January 1, 2026, the provisions of the act regulating the operation of the Central e-Registration will come into force. Today, the Council of Ministers adopted the regulations.
- From the middle of next year, all facilities that have a contract with the National Health Fund for specific services will have to integrate with the electronic appointment scheduling system
- If the obligation is ignored, the Fund will not pay for the services provided.
- A patient who does not cancel an appointment scheduled through CeR will be removed from the electronic waiting list.
- A new feature will be a voicebot, an artificial intelligence-supported machine that will call patients to remind them about their upcoming visit.
On Friday (25 July), the Council of Ministers adopted the provisions amending the Act on health care services financed from public funds.
The amendment regulates the obligation to integrate with the electronic appointment registration system ( Central e-Registration ) for all facilities offering under an agreement with the National Health Fund :
- first visit to the cardiologist
- mammography examination,
- cytological examination.
The list of benefits is to be gradually expanded in the future.
Central e-Registration simplifies the process of registering and canceling appointments for patients, and allows them access to available appointments across Poland (with the ability to narrow their search criteria to period, city, or doctor). For facilities, it means fewer missed appointments and no need to maintain their own waiting lists thanks to standardized patient admission processes.
A pilot program is currently underway until the end of 2025. The new regulations will take effect on January 1, 2026, after which facilities will have six months to comply .
Ignoring integration with the new system will not be profitable – in such a case , the National Health Fund (NFZ) will suspend payments for healthcare services covered by this obligation. The legislator's justification clearly states that this is a type of sanction necessary to enforce obligations, given the purpose of implementing the CeR. We were the first to report on this idea of disciplining facilities in Rynek Zdrowia.
The idea of sanctions for violations was praised by Marcin Romanowski , CEO of Comarch Healthcare, on the Health Market podcast "Stechtoskop." He pointed out that this could be the key to the success of Central e-Registration.
At the same time, the interviewee pointed out that not all patients understand the principles of the new system. This is significant given that the regulations include certain "sanctions" for... patients.
If they fail to report by the established date for the service, they are subject to removal from the admission schedule and the central waiting list. Unless they can substantiate that their failure to report by the established date was due to so-called force majeure. Legally, this is understood to mean "extraordinary and unforeseeable circumstances beyond the control of the entity invoking them, the consequences of which could not have been avoided despite the exercise of due diligence."
To put it bluntly: failure to cancel an appointment scheduled through CeR without a valid justification will result in the patient having to register again and "place" themselves at the very end of the electronic waiting queue.
Patients will register for appointments in the same way as during the pilot program: via the Patient's Online Account , the mojeIKP mobile application or at the medical facility.
A new feature is the implementation of a voice assistant ( voicebot ) within CeR, which will automatically remind patients about the upcoming appointment date, confirm their presence, and, if necessary, postpone or cancel the registration (i.e. withdraw the central notification and make a new one).
During public consultations, the President of the Personal Data Protection Office, Mirosław Wróblewski, expressed concerns about implementing such a tool. He highlighted the risks associated with processing biometric (voice) and sensitive (health-related) data.
The Ministry of Health addressed his concerns in the latest version of the document. The act specifies that audio recordings or transcripts are processed solely for the purpose of maintaining the appointment scheduling system. They are stored for a maximum of three years, counted from the end of the calendar year in which the recording was recorded. Processing cannot lead to the identification or verification of the beneficiary's identity based on biometric characteristics.
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